Australian Tax Law Simplification Gathers Steam

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

23 June 2006

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has introduced a bill into Parliament that will repeal more than 4,100 pages of Australia's tax legislation.

The bill will remove a number of inoperative provisions that no longer apply to taxpayers, either because they have no effect after a date in the past or because all the transactions or events they did affect have now concluded.

Costello observed that: “This bill is an important part of the Government’s efforts to reduce the complexity of Australia’s tax laws."

The bill also makes other improvements to the tax laws, such as replacing multiple definitions of some terms with a single definition for each term, as recently recommended by the Banks taskforce report 'Rethinking Regulation: Report of the Taskforce on Reducing Regulatory Burdens on Business'.

The Commissioner of Taxation, Michael D’Ascenzo, has said that approximately 200 public rulings which contain references to provisions which are being repealed, will be either revised or withdrawn. The Commissioner is also working with tax professionals to improve the readability from the ATO’s legal database of other public rulings affected by the Bill.

According to Costello, the Government will continue to look for opportunities to improve the tax laws in the future.

"For example, the Government will continue to rewrite parts of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 into the 1997 Act whenever those parts are under review," he explained.

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